#veganmofo Review for new Garden of Life Raw Protein flavors – Marley Coffee and Yerba Maté

Welcome to veganmofo 2013! If you’re not in the know, I’m going to be posting a lot about food this month! I’m off to a slightly late start this year because I’ve been at Dragon Con all weekend but I assure you this month will be filled with posts to make your mouth water.

So lets get this food party started. I’ve tried every vegan protein powder that exists and my favorite is Garden of Life’s Raw Protein. Although I would say the Sunwarrior Protein is the best tasting protein powder, it isn’t organic (as far as I know) and its more expensive. I like that the Raw Protein is both organic and a little more affordable.

I went to Whole Foods the other day to pick up some and I noticed that they have two new flavors that are exclusive to Whole Foods: Yerba Maté and Marley Coffee. Usually I prefer to get it on Amazon because it’s cheaper, but I go through like 4 containers a month so sometimes buying it at the store is necessary when I run out. Since you can’t get the Whole Foods ones online, I decided to try them in sample format (pictured above).

I made protein shakes with them. For the protein shakes, I really wanted to assess the flavor of the powders so I didn’t put fruit in them – just almond milk, ice, and a little bit of stevia. Not sure if this helped or hindered my taste experience but I felt it was the best way to try them out.

I tried the Marley Coffee one first. It’s really good!! The coffee flavor is pretty subtle but it was still delicious. After I tried the sample, I went back to Whole Foods as bought a big container of it. It does have a bit of caffeine in it (duh) so if you’re sensitive to caffeine or usually eat protein shakes at night, you may want to avoid it because of that. I’m not sure if eating it has the same acidic effect of drinking coffee, though I doubt it since I’m sure there’s a tiny amount of coffee in it.

Next up was the Yerba Maté flavor.

Although this flavor tastes good, in my opinion it doesn’t really taste like Yerba Mate. It smells like it, though. Yerba Mate has a pretty distinctive taste that I LOVE and I didn’t really feel like it was present here, but maybe it was just me.

I will say, I did notice that I had a lot more energy this day than normal. I ate this shake the morning of my birthday, which was a very rigorous day of sewing, filming, baking, and working on music. Normally after all that I’d be cranky and tired and wanting to sleep but I felt fine well into the night. So I think the claims of energy are actually sound.

Price

At Whole Foods, all of the Raw Protein flavors cost $30 a jar. You can get the non-exclusive flavors cheaper on Amazon for as little as $20 a jar (sometimes less, I’ve seen it occasionally go on sale for $15). I’m guessing one of the reasons they’re doing these WF exclusive flavors is to encourage people to spend the extra money on them.

Bottom Line, if you love coffee and don’t mind spending a little extra, the Marley Coffee flavor may be for you. If you love Yerba Mate I would probably pass on that flavor unless you want to get it for the energy boost, which it actually does provide as far as I can tell. In my opinion, the best flavor for taste alone is still the Vanilla Spiced Chai one!

Related

Comments

about adorpheus

I'm a musician and a cosplayer. I watch a lot of Star Trek and listen to a lot of Elliott Smith and eat a lot of chocolate. I mostly post about veganism, because being a vegan is pretty great. Sometimes I post about the other things I do. I was featured on MTV's True Life. Read more...